Whereas some inhabitants of the White House were more or less content to outsource their occult activities to mediums, astrologers, and the like, Julia Tyler is believed to have taken things into her own hands, at least on occasion. She served as first lady for a seriously short time, from just 1844 to 1845. That's because she married sitting president John Tyler, who had been a widower since the death of his first wife Letitia in September 1842.
While she wasn't exactly a shocking presence while in the White House, Tyler wasn't shy about the occult. She reportedly believed that she possessed paranormal abilities of her own, perhaps influenced by similar spooky leanings from her own mother, who held seances and engaged in an astrological reading from time to time. Tyler was likewise said to have held seances at her post-White House plantation home (though she appears to have leaned somewhat towards the more scientific side of things, believing that common seance phenomena like levitating tables were the result of poorly understood magnetic forces and not ghosts).
She is also said to have gotten a vision of her own husband's death in an 1862 dream. While asleep, Tyler reportedly saw him struggling to breathe in Richmond, Virginia's Exchange Hotel, but upon traveling there, she found him seemingly well and went back home. He died two days later of what may have been a stroke while staying at the Exchange Hotel.
